Sichuan Province Earthquake Offers Lessons for Landslide Prediction from GNSS Observations

Landslides along a river in Sichuan, China following the 2022 Luding earthquake

7 August 2024–Using data collected from a 2022 magnitude 6.8 earthquake in Luding County in China’s Sichuan Province, researchers tested whether Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observations could be used for rapid prediction of earthquake-triggered landslides. In their report in Seismological Research Letters, Kejie Chen of the Southern University of … Continue Reading »

Strange Seismic Wave Arrivals Lead to Discovery of Overturned Slab in the Mediterranean

Map of seismic stations and the deep Granada earthquake. Red triangles indicate stations for studying the low velocity layer on the slab.

21 February 2024–Strange seismic wave arrivals from a 2010 earthquake under Spain were the clues that led to an unexpected discovery beneath the western Mediterranean: a subducted oceanic slab that has completely overturned. The waveforms paint a picture of a slab that descended rapidly into the Earth’s mantle and flipped … Continue Reading »

Earthquake Fatality Measure Offers New Way to Estimate Impact on Countries

Ruins of Pelileo in Ambato — after the 1949 Ambato earthquake in Ecuador

15 February 2024–A new measure that compares earthquake-related fatalities to a country’s population size concludes that Ecuador, Lebanon, Haiti, Turkmenistan, Iran and Portugal have experienced the greatest impact from fatalities in the past five centuries. The new impact measure, introduced in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America by … Continue Reading »